The remote itself is completely free for personal use, and will always remain so.

There are some bonus features, which are rewarded to everyone making a donation to the project. You can donate from the settings menu in the app, and pay as much as you'd like. Read more about the bonus features here.

If you are a business or other commercial entity that wants to use the remote, please contact me at erlend.dahl@gmail.com.

If your have been talking to me about testing a new release, you've probably gotten a link to the test client, and/or a link to the test server:

Installing the server: If it is an installation, just run it as usual. If it is a zip file, just unpack it anywhere you want. If you're not replacing your current version, please make sure that you are in fact running the test version, and not the old version you had installed.

Installing the client: Open the given client url on your phone, and the usual app installer will pop up. Note: Some Android users needs to allow app installs from 'Unknown sources' (outside of Google Play, that is) in order to install the test version. To do this, you need to find the 'Unknown sources' setting, and check it. It is usually located in Android Settings => Application Settings => Unknown Sources, or in Android Settings => Security => Unknown Sources, or in Android Settings => Developer => Unknown Sources.

When testing new versions, please note that you may experience bugs I haven't discovered yet. If so, please tell me about it, so that I can fix it before releasing the update to everyone.

MediaMonkey (MM) is a media player that can manage and play your music. It runs on your Windows PC, and plays your music through any speakers connected to the PC.

MediaMonkey Android (MMA) is the Android version of MediaMonkey, which runs on your phone, and plays the music files you have on your phone through any speakers connected to the phone.

MMRemote is the remote I have made. It runs on your Android phone or tablet. It cannot play or stream your music, it can simply remote control MediaMonkey if you have it installed on your PC. It displays the currently playing track's info and offers basic media controls, saving you from walking to the PC.

MMRemote Server is the small program that you must install on your PC in order to communicate with the MMRemote on your phone.

The remote app (Android)

MediaMonkey is a popular Windows application for organizing your music library, and playing your music and videos. A pretty great media player, if you ask me. For more information, visit the MediaMonkey web page.

INTERNET and ACCESS_NETWORK_STATE are necessary to send data over the wireless network, and without that ability, the app would be pretty useless.ACCESS_WIFI_STATE is to be able to detect the Wifi state, so that the app can display a warning if Wifi is disabled.WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE is for caching album art, to save network traffic.BILLING is to allow users to buy the bonus features through Google Play.INSTALL_SHORTCUT is used when you create Library shortcuts on your homescreen.READ_PHONE_STATE is used when performing actions if you're getting a phone call (like lowering the volume, or pausing the music).

Google Play (previously Android Market) automatically updates the app when a new update is launched. Please note that there may be a delay of several hours from I upload the update to Google Play starts distributing it.

If you don't know what this means, you can just skip this question. Nothing important here!You can send intents to the app by starting it with custom 'Extras'. Supply an extra named 'ACTION'. The following actions are supported:

net.erlenddahl.mmremotefree.widget.WidgetBase.MEDIA_PLAY_LIBRARY_NODE: Start playing something. This is used when creating homescreen shortcuts, and requires the additional Extras: LIBRARYNODE_ID and LIBRARYNODE_TYPE.

From version 2.5, there is a new permission system. New remotes are given a default set of permissions, which does not include potentially dangerous permissions such as shutting down or restarting the computer.To give yourself (or others) new permissions, you need to open the server window (on your computer), go to the tab "Remotes", find your remote, and give it the permissions you want to. See the image below:

If the server doesn't start, or you experience strange errors that cannot be debugged using the regular server log, Windows' event log is the answer. I recommend that you start the server and provoke the error right before opening the event log, so that the exception comes to the top of the log, and is easy to find. To open the event log, see Microsoft's simple step by step guide here.

If your server version is older than 2.5, please update it. That will probably solve the issues you're having anyway.

In newer versions of the remote, simply click the 'Advanced' link in the bottom left corner of the server window (on your computer), and then 'Show log'. Then click 'Export log to file' to get an actual file, and send this to me.

If the server isn't running (for example if it crashes), you can find the log by locating the log file manually:

Open a Run window (press Windows+R or open the start menu and open 'Run').

Enter %appdata% into the Run prompt, and press 'Ok'. This opens your application data folder.

Enter the folder named 'MediaMonkey Remote Server', and you should see a folder named 'Logs', which contains log files for the last two days. Send me the newest file(s).

The two important connection information items are the computer's IP and the port number the server listens at. Both these can be found on the main tab of the server, as shown in the picture. Note that the computer may have multiple IPs (if it has multiple network cards). In that case, they are displayed by holding the mouse over the blue link, and you have to try them one at a time.

First of all, please note that people outside of your network cannot control your music (unless you have spesifically opened the ports in your router, and given them your external IP). However, if you want to make sure that people connected to the same wireless local area network cannot control your music, you can change their permissions in the 'Remotes' tab.

Since donations were pretty rare, and I'm actually losing money on this project, I decided to implement some specific features users were asking for as a kind of 'thank you very much indeed' to the people deciding to make donations. As with the normal donations, you may choose what you want to pay for the bonus features yourself.NOTE: No features that has been free will ever be changed to bonus features. The bonus features will not be essential for the use of the remote, and are there only as an incentive to support the development.

The bonus features will be stuff I don't think is essential for the remote itself, but still makes it a better product overall. The following bonus features are implemented, and will be a part of the next update for the remote:

The computer menu - Close/open MediaMonkey, turn the screen on/off, put the computer to sleep, hibernation, shut it down, restart it, or wake it up (Wake-on-lan).

Widgets - A large widget that gives you direct access to most of the remote controls right from your Android home screen.

The permanent notification - A permanent notification in the Android notification area that gives you an instant overview over the currently playing song, and allows you to open the remote.

Lock screen controls - Lock screen controls that allows you to control your music without unlocking the phone.

Homescreen shortcuts - Allows you to create homescreen shortcuts for every item in your Library. This means that you can start playing your favorite album simply by clicking a shortcut on your homescreen!

Lyrics - Searches for lyrics for your songs. Can be configured to use the MiniLyrics plugin in addition to searching online.

There will be more features in future updates, both free features and bonus features (once you've bought the bonus features, you'll receive every future bonus feature too).

Google Play: In the remote, click Settings => Bonus features => and click the 'Status' item. If this does nothing, please see this question

PayPal: In the remote, click Settings => Bonus features => and enter the e-mail you used to donate in the 'PayPal donation e-mail'. If you have forgotten which e-mail that was, look for the e-mail receipt you got when you donated. See this question for details.

Yes, but you need to open the required port (by default 12511) in your router, and find your external IP. I am unable to provide support for this because of the wide range of different routers. Please see your router's instruction book.

Hold your mouse over 'Hold for QR code' in the server's main tab, and use any QR code reader on your phone to read it. When the QR reader has read it, make sure you open the url with MMRemote. The server will then be added to your server list.

The MediaMonkey API is sometimes a little slow, so the server has to spend some time waiting for MediaMonkey to send the updated playlist. This often makes the playlist tab in the app a little delayed.

The 'Now playing' list is downloaded 'on demand', which means that only the tracks shown on the screen will be downloaded. This saves bandwidth and memory on your phone, as well as making the first load a lot quicker. Nevertheless, a long list will take more time to initialize than a short list. That's just how it is. Everything is optimized, and a list of around 1000 tracks should takea couple of seconds to initialize. After that, tracks will be loaded as you scroll, with a little or no delay.

If you have a lot of album art embedded in the music files, that might slow down the loading. If so, it is recommended to export the art (save it in image files instead), or deactivate album art (checkbox in server settings) if you need very responsive long lists.

Troubleshooting

This is a false positive, which sometimes happens with all anti-virus programs.

I promise that there are no viruses, so if my word is enough, you can solve this by either adding the server to some kind of white list in your anti-virus program, or temporarily deactivating it while installing the server (remember to reactivate it afterwards!).

Some users have reported getting this error message when attempting to install the remote server. The error message is usually caused by anti-virus programs being too aggressive, and blocking the installation altogether.

Bryan J. reported that with Avast, "hardened mode" and "gaming/silenced mode" needs to be disabled.

A general solution is usually to temporarily disable your anti-virus software (on your own responsibility!) while installing the server. Remember to re-activate it afterwards!

The Windows Firewall may have set network dependent rules on your server even if you allowed it through on the first run.

This problem can often be resolved by simply opening Network Adapters, and disable and re-enable the Local Area Connection adapter. Upon reconnect, make sure to allow the remote through again, and everything should be well.

The easiest is to use MediaMonkey itself to find the lyrics for your song. It has a more advanced search function than my remote, and is usually better. To do that right click the song in MediaMonkey, choose Properties => Lyrics => Lookup lyrics.

Use the MiniLyrics plugin for MediaMonkey, which stores the lyrics in another format that the remote can read. You can get it here.

First of all, make sure you have actually installed the server. You need to have both MediaMonkey (the media player itself), AND the MediaMonkey Remote Server for this to work. Go to www.mmremote.net to download it.

Next, make sure you have allowed the server to communicate through any firewalls you have installed. This is usually done in the firewall's security settings. Note that most newer Windows systems have an integrated firewall (Windows Firewall). Look at this question for a description of how to make the Windows Firewall allow the MMRemote server to communicate: How do I configure the Windows Firewall?

If you are sure you have let the server through all firewalls, you need to make sure the client and server are configured correctly. Take a look at this question for more information: How do I connect to the server?

MediaMonkey

I always recommend taking a backup of your MediaMonkey database before using my remote to do anything. Even though it has been tested thoroughly for many years now, without issues, I can never guarantee complete safety.

To take a backup of your database, navigate to %APPDATA%\MediaMonkey (you can enter that directly in Windows Explorer, or navigate to something like C:\Users\\AppData\MediaMonkey). This folder contains all MediaMonkey settings. The "MM.DB" file is the database, but you can backup the entire folder too.